the pentagon i have to say was fairly cooperative. there were different levels of competence when it came to specific public affairs officials. generally speaking, they were cooperative. but they want you to go through them and i didn't. i generally just found the troops on my own and they put me in touch with their fellow troops. it's interesting, when you were talking about the afghan soldiers, this something i haven't talked about in other interviews. one of the things that's interesting, as i went through the life of this one combat outpost from 2006 to when it's overrun in 2009, is the different levels of competence when it came to the afghan soldiers. unfortunately for the u.s. in that region, in regional command east, eastern afghanistan in 2009, it was one of the worst battalions of afghan soldiers ever. when it was attacked, when combat outpost keating was attacked, most of them ran away or hid or when through the american bar racks stealing ipods and computers. it's no surprise because actually a few months before at another